Francois Hollande vows to rid Mali of 'terrorists'

Francois Hollande, the French president, has vowed to rid Mali of
'terrorists', as French soldiers and Malian troops were hunting from house
to house for Islamist insurgents in the northern city of Gao.

French President Francois HollandePhoto: AFP/GETTY

5:45PM GMT 11 Feb 2013

Speaking in the wake of a surprise attack on Gao at the weekend, Mr Hollande said he would let "not one space of Mali's territory be under the control of terrorists".

The brazen raid on Sunday caught French and Malian troops off guard, and posed the risk that France's forces could become entangled in a messy guerilla war in the African nation.

The raid had followed successive blasts by two suicide bombers at a northern checkpoint. The attacks suggested that the French forces, which have 4,000 soldiers on the ground in Mali in an intervention now in its fifth week, were vulnerable to hit-and-run guerrilla attacks by the jihadists to the rear of the French forward lines.

French and Malian soldiers in armoured vehicles reinforced key locations and sandbagged road checkpoints at the entrances to Gao on Monday, alert to the threat of further attacks from bands of insurgents reportedly hiding in the surrounding desert scrub.

Officials in Gao said the risks of infiltration, shootings and bomb blasts remained high.

French leaders have said they intend to start pulling troops out of Mali in March, and want to hand over security operations to a larger, 8,000-strong African military force currently still being assembled and drawn mostly from West African states.

But this African contingent is still struggling to deploy in positions behind the French, raising the risk that Paris' forces could face "mission creep" and be obliged to stay on longer to guarantee security in the face of rebel guerrilla tactics.

"There is no doubt that the Islamists will find weak spots," Jakkie Cilliers, executive director of the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, told Reuters.